Beading and Basketball

Hi all! I’ve been away from the blog site for a few weeks, sorry about that. I’m a huge college basketball fan (men and women teams) and I love this time of year for March Madness, so I’ve been watching all the coverage. It’s hard for me to watch games and work on jewelry at the same time, so my jewelry making has taken a back seat. My bracket choices are doing okay, but some surprise wins have knocked down my bracket standings. Congrats to those teams, but boo for me. The Sweet Sixteen games are coming up this weekend, so good luck to all….. but especially my picks. ;D

In between game days, I did get to my beading table and I sorted, organized and made a few pieces. I’m one of those creatives that likes an organized, cleaned up space before I start working. It doesn’t stay that way during the process, but I like to start that way. It helps me get inspired when I go through my bead containers and see what’s in there and see things that I have forgotten about. I have found that I’ll have a component or beads for months, sometimes years, and suddenly see it with ‘new eyes’ and whip something up using them. Not sure what triggers that, but maybe I’ve seen them used elsewhere, watched a video on a particular technique and realize I could use it with those pieces, whatever. It really jazzes me when that happens and motivates me to keep going.

So I got some new components from Goody Beads after watching one of their Facebook videos. They are four pair of fan tassel components on silver tone rings. They are so fun looking and would be great for Spring and Summer. During my sorting I pulled some beads out that I had stashed and tried to come up with a way to use these fan tassel pieces for earrings. For the one set with the matching necklace, I just strung some complimentary beads I had in my collection, attached the fan tassel component to the bottom of the eye pin and put on ear wires. With the other two I actually used jewelry glue and glued the beads to the top of the ring so the fan tassel hung underneath. I love how they turned out! I’ve already received compliments when I wore the black pair the other night. I have had those rectangular beads I used on the necklace a long time, wondering what I would ever do with them. When I started putting the earrings together I saw these ceramic beads in the mix and thought they would make a great addition to a coordinating necklace, without looking too matchy-matchy to the earrings. You just never know when the beads and components you have had tucked away will ‘speak to you’ and all come together. I really like how the multi-colored tassels take on a different look depending on what colors are used with them and of course you can’t go wrong with silver and black in anything. So, what do you think?

Pondering over beads and coffee- “What people call serendipity sometimes is just having your eyes open.” ~Jose Manuel Barroso

Thanks Michelle! So glad you like them. They were new to me as well and thought they were cute, as tassels in miniature form with lots of color. Makes them versatile with various fashions. Tassels can be a hit or miss with people, but these are tiny and more easily incorporated in design w/o being the whole design element. Thanks for your kind comments and for stopping by! ~Holly